KDE Plasma 6 Linux Desktop

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time we're going to look at plasma 6 the latest version of KD's popular lunux desktop environment to test plasma 6 we're going to be running the KD need on Linux distribution so let's go and get started right here we are on the website for the KDE Community which is an international team that develops and distributes free open-source software as we can see KD published a plasma desktop that's a subject of this video but they also make a range of applications and if we scroll down we can see some of these not least including the Critter painting program fantastic piece of software I've got a video All About Critter and then below this we've got the Caden live video editor and talking of Caden live Caden Live 24 has just been released and we'll be looking at this on the channel fairly soon however sticking with the subject of this video Let's scroll back up to the the plasma desktop there it is and in fact we'll scroll down straight after that and click on install on your computer and this gets us to a list of popular Linux distributions which use the plasma desktop and KDE applications and as we can see these include kbuntu KDE with auntu they include open soua and they also include a bit further down here we've got Fedora KDE there it is and also mangaro KDE however in this video we're going to test out plasma 6 using KDE neon the one I went straight past there it is and KD neon is a rolling or constantly updated Linux Dro that's based on Ubuntu and which showcases KD software exactly as the developers intended it because it's constantly updated KD neon is suitable for adventurous KDE enthusiasts who want to experience the latest KD software as soon as it's available so let's just uh scroll down a little bit more and click on a learn more to learn more about KD neon there we are and if we now click on download now we find various live images and earlier I wrote the user Edition to a USB drive using belena etcher and I used the USB drive to install KD neon on a j4105 test system and the install I can report was a very straightforward stylish and painless process and indeed if an AM minimize our browser guess what here we are running KD neon with the plasma 6 desktop and it's all rather lovely and very exciting indeed right let's take a look around and here we are running the default configuration of a Linux desktop that I think would also be pretty familiar to a Windows user and personally I've always thought that plasma is a really beautiful desktop interface as well as one that I really like because it provides a very high level of user control without having to install extensions so for example here in plasma 6 if we open up the settings app we find it's been improved to make it even more user friendly for example there a fewer nested pages but we've still got lots of user control of every aspect of the interface there really is a great deal here that can be changed and tweaked and a lot more than we can alter in for example a standard gnome Linux desktop or in Windows 10 or Windows 11 if we look under themes which is just a down here under appearance and style there we are the default theme is called Breeze and this has been updated to have a more modern look and feel with fewer frames and more consistent spacing if we want to apply a theme we can just click on it let's click on for example Breeze dark like that and we get a choice of what gets applied and this can be down to a very specific level let's just apply everything here like that as we can see we've now got the ad Dark theme which is uh well darker let's just go back and go back to the light theme Let's Be Wild like that there we go and we can also get lots of new themes and indeed we'll come back and explore some very special themes a bit later in the video but just to show you the kind of settings we've got in themes we can control colors and accents things like that we can control the application style lots of things can be edited here we can put frames back in if we want them scroll bars transparency there's just a lot of settings here in plasma 6 where we can change what they call the plasma style we can change Windows decorations again there's lots of things we can alter here I just like having this level of of user control as in most Linux diss we can also to control icons we can control cursors we've got the ability to pick custom sound themes and indeed the default sound theme is now called ocean rather than oxygen although oxygen is still available also under appearance and style if we just go back there we can change fonts we can control every font element in the user interface just like you can't in Windows 10 or 11 and I also find it great that font management for the computer is in the same tab that's just a nice little touch also here we can control wallpapers there's lots of fantastic new wallpapers included shall we pick a different one shall we pick that one that looks pretty wacky let's apply that oh yes that's a exciting wacky new wallpaper and it's worth noting if you're using multiple monitors which I'm not here you can configure different wallpapers on different displays this all said there are a few visual inconsistencies for example here in settings our menu is a hamburger type menu up there and that's the same for example if we go to the dolphin file manager there it is this also uses a hamburger menu here on the right like that rather than the one leftish in system settings but if I launch something else let's go to for example utilities and the Kate Advanced text editor this uses normal menus and I do find this slightly strange I think that should be consistent at using normal menus or hamburger menus ideally not hamburger menus normal menus I think are better or an even nicer option would be to provide a choice of menu Styles somewhere in the system settings down at the bottom of the screen let's just close these for a second there they are we have the panel which as you can see now floats by default although if you actually run up a window which touches it like we just had like that it actually stops floating or if we maximize a window again the panel stops floating although as I'm sure you guess as control of this if we go down here we can enter edit mode where we've got lots of control of the panel we can turn off floating if we want to like that and put it back again if we wish but we can also for example change things like the width we could for example just fit the content which gives us more like a traditional dock effect and we can also change the position we could put the position for example over here we' now got our dock over there we can also change the position of that although Pally think I'm going to stick with the fit height and then go back to position and put it down back the bottom as I like quite a traditional panel and it's also worth noting here we've got a lot of options for visibility as you can see always visible autohide Etc final thing to note with the panel so if we go down to the bottom and we right click we can show Alternatives and this allows us to change the style of the panel so for example we could have a more task manager style like that although I think we'll we'll f with a default icons only task manager in terms of other changes in plasma 6 KDE have chosen to make double click the default so for example in the dolphin file manager we just open it up we have to double click to open up a folder like that although if you're a Linux Die Hard you want to use single click you can change back to that in the settings and here in the file manager let's just uh minimize it like that there have been some accessibility improvements like for example the ability to press F10 to open up menu there we are rather exciting and it's also possible now to rightclick a folder and to open in a split view which is a rather handy thing to be able to do other changes here in plasma 6 include support for HDR games some people will really welcome that and we've also had improvements in the spectacle screen recording utility which is uh over here there we are and here we can now capture or record not just a full screen or a window but also a rectangular region just as we've been able to do for some time now in other Linux desktop environments it's also worth noting that the software manager has been updated you probably guess that it's called discover here it is down here let's see what we can discover and there we are so despite what some Linux haters like to say it's perfectly possible to use this desktop and install applications without going near the terminal finally for those interested in changes under the hood if we go back to settings and we go all the way down to the bottom of settings to about this system we can see that plasma 6 has adopted whand as its default Graphics platform although X11 is still supported plasma 6 has also transitioned from qt5 to the qt6 GUI toolkit and is launched with a new KD framework 6 libraries as well as the KD gear 2402 applications in what pde term a mega release and this is all explained on a web page you're probably not surprised to hear that and uh here we are on this very page it is a mega release and this explains exactly what is going on but in short the key thing to note is that pretty much all of the software technology behind the scenes has been updated and without getting into a debate about why KDE has different names for different aspects of the same desktop environment and why they have different numbering systems for these aspects let's move on to the next segment of the video greetings here I am back again I've been playing with the settings and I I want to show you a few specific features that have caught my attention and the first of these is the task switcher where if I press out and tab we get p switcher like that by default it's got a grid view as we can see but if we go to system settings where I have increased the font size so we can see things more clearly we can see there are lots of different options the thumbnail grid Etc but we also got for example compacts like that so if we apply that and I go back to out tab we get a little compact view like that and uh I don't particularly like having show selected window let's get rid of that and apply that and that will just us little list like that which seems to be a okay we've also got a cover switch let's just show you that one and uh whoa that's pretty wacky isn't it that's a sort of thing that looks great the first time you use it and if you keep using it it drives you absolutely insane but uh there it is we've also got down here flip switch which is fairly similar let's just uh show you that like that and uh back to aach switcher we've also got large icons I think this is probably my favorite large icons like that is are all I I think we really need that's a nice way of uh switching windows and then finally here we've got sidebar which uh for me is just bizarre to have them on the side but uh there we are you can do that if you want or we can go back to the the thumbnail grid which we've now got of course without the showing of the particular windows but uh for me I think I'm going to go back to the large icons like that and that I think is an excellent task Switcher so having seen how we can switch tasks let's now turn to switching workspaces which here in plasma are called virtual desktops and to use Virtual desktops you first have to go to settings and then from settings you need to go to window management and guess what virtual desktops and as you can see here I've created two virtual desktops until you've created at least one extra desktop you can't work with virtual desktops let's create another one let's call this one I don't know we'll call that uh Kevin the hamster that's the obvious name for a desktop I think like that and you mustn't forget to apply and we've now got four desktops accessible here on the taskbar which we can go between like that which is a very exciting or we can also switch between them using control and the function keys so I can press contrl FS2 F3 F4 F1 Etc alternatively if you want to be very graphical you can go to desktop effects and under desktop effects and there's masses of effects you can work with here there is so much you can control here in a plasma 6 but if we keep going down somewhere down here I will find there it is under window management we have Cube we can turn on the cube we can configure the cube if we want to with how it's accessed for example is by initially meta C which means the Super Key the Windows key and C but we'll accept that for now and also we'll apply our changes and if I now press meta and C there we are a cube has come up I've now released the key we can now move around this as much as we want to having a really exciting time and select the workspace we want to use and I have to admit I never work with workspaces it's not something it's part of the way I use computers but the cube this thing here is something that was removed in plasma 5.23 but in plasma 6 it's back which will make some people very happy indeed now if your personal wet wear is working reliably you'll recall that earlier I said we'd return to themes and as you can see I've now got a wacky theme working this is a theme that makes plasma 6 look like a Windows XP which I think is rather cool bit of fun not sure I'd use it all the time but this is a rather cool and we go into system settings I'll show you how I did this here we are we'll go down to colors and themes and you'll see I've now got a theme called expose which makes things look like Windows XP it didn't actually include the background I add in the background myself but it is rather cool and all I had to do was to get new up here and this shows us various themes we can install these aren't from KDE itself they've been created by users and shared which is to be nice to them and to give full disclosure I've had a lot of problems trying to install different themes and make them work we have to remember that plasma 6 is still very new it's a a few weeks from release as I'm making this video so there are still some bugs to be ired out and I'm sure they will be gone long before it becomes a mainstream desktop but I have got things to work as you can see I've installed this theme the expose a theme there's also a theme down here which is makes things look like Windows 7 whereas that gone that's 7o I can't get that one to work at the moment but I will persevere but anyway I thought you might like to see you can do all kinds of things in terms of configuration in plasma 6 including giving it the feel of a CL classic Windows release plasma 6 is a beautiful Linux desktop that offers for us have full control of their working environment and which I'm sure will soon be included with an increasing number of Linux dros but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please pleas subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very [Music] soon

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 112,356

Keywords: KDE Plasma, KDE Plasma 6, KDE, Plasma, Plasma 6, Qt6, Linux desktop, desktop, desktop environment, Wayland, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, KDE Neon

Id: iIxRm8IhFJs

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024